This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/725,142, filed Mar. 23, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,845,596 which claims priority to provisional U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/478,077, filed Jun. 12, 2003, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
This invention relates to the machines that place metal clips on chub and netted products, known as clippers, the packaging of chub and net-enclosed or netted products, and the machines and methods that form such products. This invention especially relates to the machines and methods that form net-enclosed turkeys and similar poultry and meat products, as well as potentially, net-enclosed firewood, bulk explosives, and other possible net-enclosed consumer and industrial products. It also especially relates to clippers for these and other machines.
Knitted and extruded netting is a packaging material of choice for industries including meat and poultry, aquaculture, horticulture, Christmas tree, PVC pipe, environmental, aviation, fruit and produce, toys, housewares, and the like. Knitted netting can be soft, flexible, and conformable to a variety of irregularly shaped products. Knitted netting provides air circulation, and can be decorative and protective. Tipper Tie Inc., a Dover Industries company, makes and sells desirable netting under the trademark Net-All. In meat netting, Net-All netting is used for hams, whole birds, poultry breasts, and molded meat products.
Netting is applied to products manually, semi-automatically, and fully automatically by a variety of machines and methods including the Tipper Tie Whole Bird Packaging System, the Tipper Tie Automatic Whole Bird Packaging System, Tipper Tie Model TB15, and the Tipper Tie Clipper Model Z3214. Another Tipper Tie apparatus for applying netting is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,234, issued on Aug. 27, 1991, to Alfred J. Evans et al. for a Collagen Film and Netting Packaging System and Method. A loop forming mechanism for flexible packaging material is also shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,165,216, issued on Nov. 24, 1992 to Dennis J. May et al., for a Loop Forming Mechanism for Flexible Packaging Material. As stated in the identified Evans et al. patent, netting is sometimes placed around products to be netted when the products exits chutes or tubes around which the netting is rucked.
Machines known as clippers may place metal clips on the netting between the products, to close the netting and provide for separation of the products. Clippers are best known in the formation of chubs for sausage and similar meat products. In chub-forming applications and also in netted product applications, voiders form emptied, rope sections in the packaging material in use. Clips travel along feed rails to the clippers. Punches of the clippers then act against dies to clip the rope sections, to form the ends of the chubs or other products. A sophisticated, high speed chub-forming machine is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,259,168 issued on Nov. 9, 1993 to Alfred J. Evans et al. for a Continuously Rotating Platform with Multiple Mounted Double Clippers for Continuously Forming Linked Product. In that machine, pairs of clippers are fed from single clip rails, as in the drawing on the face of the patent. As explained at columns 15 and 16 of that patent, the structure of the clip feeding mechanism of that machine requires that clips be suspended above open spaces by forces against the sides, to properly locate the clips to be driven by the clipper punches.
While the existing products, machines and methods of the “netting art” and the separate “clipping art” have great value, especially those from Tipper Tie Inc., the frontier of technology is ahead of them, to be advanced further by inventive efforts.